Conventional wireless communication systems provide wireless connectivity between remote devices such as mobile stations using radio access networks (RANs) formed from a plurality of radio transceiver stations with overlaying coverage that include wireless access points, base stations, base station routers, and the like. A remote device may establish a wireless communication link over an air interface with a RAN that is a communicatively coupled to a network. The remote device may be, for example, a mobile station that uses the wireless communication link to access services provided by the network such as establishing a communication session with another mobile station. The information transmitted in the communication session between the two mobile stations may be analog or digital information and the communication path between the mobile stations may be formed using a circuit-switched architecture or a packet-switched architecture. In this application, we are concerned with packet-switched architectures that divide the information up into data packets that can be transmitted along numerous paths between the two remote devices. Different wireless access technologies may be used to support packet data applications. Some exemplary wireless access technologies include WiFi, third generation (3G) technologies such as EvDO, and fourth generation (4G) technologies such as LTE and WiMAX.
Each of the transceiver stations in the RAN is capable of supporting one or more radio carriers that operate at different frequency bandwidths. For example, in a RAN implementing WiMAX technology, the carriers transmitted by the transceiver stations may operate at frequency bandwidths of 1.25 MHz, 2.5 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz or 20 MHz.
The frequency bandwidth of the carrier determines the number of subchannels available for constructing the individual data packets (hereinafter referred to as data frames). Each data frame includes an uplink control channel region formed from some of the subchannels of the carrier, and an uplink traffic region formed from other subchannels of the carrier. In a WiMAX system where the carrier operates at a 10 MHz frequency bandwidth, the carrier may provide a total of 70 subchannels, 35 of which may be dedicated to the uplink control channel region for identifying the users, monitoring the quality of the signal, and acknowledging receipt of the signal, the remaining 35 of which may be dedicated to the downlink traffic region for delivering the data payload of the data frame, which may be for example a portion of a voice file. Because a larger frequency bandwidth provides a larger number of available subchannels on the carrier, the frequency bandwidth also determines both the maximum number of active remote device users that can be accommodated at any one time, as well as the amount of coverage that the carrier can provide for the simple reason that there are more subchannels available in each data frame for controlling both the delivery of the information as well as the amount of information delivered. Hence the maximum number of active users and the coverage that can be serviced by a carrier operating at a frequency bandwidth of 10 MHz is substantially greater than that of a carrier operating at a frequency bandwidth of 5 MHz.